Lifeboat Foundation

If you’ve never heard of a tensegrity structure, you should stop now and watch the video below. In it, [The Action Lab] shows a 3D printed table that is held up only with strings. We didn’t say suspended by strings but held up. Or so it appears. The model is from Thingiverse, but it is one of those things you have to see to believe.

The basic idea is pretty simple. Strings have a lot of tensile strength but collapse under the slightest compressive force. The arrangement of strings puts the force on the center string which is essentially hanging — the force is pulling the string down. The other three strings aren’t just for show, though, they keep the structure from tipping over in any one direction.

Continue reading “Table Held Up” »

When you’re a software and hardware engineer sometimes you need a little challenge. Engineer Robert Lucian Chiriac’s latest Raspberry Pi creation can detect license plates and read the characters with fairly decent accuracy. This is an involved project that relies on machine learning to properly interpret images from the camera into discernible text.

The primary license plate reading function is constructed using three separate applications (there are more used throughout the project, but these three are critical). Chiriac used the YOLOv3 object detection algorithm to create a bounding box around each license plate it detects from the camera input. The image within the bounding box is sent to CRAFT, a text detecting application. Once the location for each character in the plate has been identified, the information is passed along to CRNN to predict the actual text.

Chiriac mounted the Raspberry Pi, GPS module, 4G module and Pi camera to his car’s rear-view mirror with a 3D-printed unit he designed. The Pi camera is even adjustable with a ball-joint swivel mount.

Continue reading “Raspberry Pi Project Uses Artificial Intelligence to Detect License Plates” »

World’s Largest 3D Printer re: Philip K. Dick on 3/1/2020: Science Fiction in the News.

Our Brave New Open Source World: 3D print a face mask and make your own filter from household items, if it comes to that…

As a last resort, DIY masks provide more protection than nothing. Researchers tested household materials. Here’s which captured the most particles.

Topline: A group of 300-plus engineers, designers, tech founders and others galvanized on Facebook with a goal of building a ventilator using readily available materials, 3D printing and open-source hardware resources. In just seven days, they built a prototype that will be validated as a solution to the global ventilator shortage by Irish authorities as early as next week.

Dreams of human immortality may remain so, but extending our lives beyond 100, even 150 years, can soon become a reality. ‘The Future is Now’ explores ground-breaking technology that might help us to slow down the ageing process and overcome our physical limitations.

3D-printing of brand new human organs, controlling bionic prosthetics with your mind, or invading your body with disease-fighting microrobots. Hosts Kate and Talish bring you the latest developments in biomedical engineering.

Continue reading “The Future is Now. Biomedical advances that will change the human body” »

But using porous TCP to print bones does have some drawbacks. Its compressive strength is much lower than that of some human load-bearing bones, such as our thighbones. Compressive strength would rise over time, but it could be years before it would match pre-operation strength levels.

3D Printing Bones for Mars?

Several other groups are working on similar approaches. At NYU School of Medicine and NYU Langone Health, scientists have been developing 3D printed scaffold implants that could help patient groups such as children with skull deform ities. Early research results show that up to 77 percent of the bone scaffolding had been absorbed and replaced by natural bone 6 months after surgery, and that the newly-grown bone was just as strong as the original.

Continue reading “Custom-Made Bones Are Being 3D Printed in a Lab Then Implanted in People” »

Researchers can print cells and biomaterials that make up human tissues, but there’s still a long way to go before fully functional organs can be made to order.

What can 3D printing do for medicine? The “sky is the limit,” says Northwell Health researcher Dr. Todd Goldstein.